The Black Angel
by jcdenton2012
Summary: This is the story of Fabius Bile's greatest creation, The Black Angel, born from the remains of a vanquished Necron warrior and a remnant of Sanguinius's captured blood.
1. Chapter 1

Most of the room was a deep and dark excluding some cautionary lights that shown with a mild hue of green upon the boxy sides of a few humming generators. These machines whose metallic industrial masses reached deep into the stony basin were the remnants from an age lost passed and served as a reminder to a civilization long since pushed into a steady scientific and cultural decline. Contrasting these ancient wonders were the rotting corpses of numerous races stacked up in giant mounds of naked flesh like some form of demented fire kindling.

As if in spite of the almost all consuming darkness there was also a single bright column of white light amongst the mounds of discarded rotting corpses whose pink and grayish flesh was slowly being eked away at by flies and worms. This light, it glared down from an overhead surgical lamp illuminating two gore covered surgical tables.

Off to the sides were several glass bio-containers with fragmented body parts suspended in a bluish preservation liqueur. These body parts were from numerous races and were attached to medical wires that kept the flesh from rotting. Heads, arms, and legs; all floating innocently surrounded by piles of rotting decomposing flesh.

Somebody, a tall human male with a weathered face and mechanical pack with numerous surgical arms stepped forward while whistling in amusement as he pulled away a blood stained clothe covering numerous unwashed surgical tools. Shortly after these tools were revealed he stepped aside and adorned a surgical gown sown from semi-decomposed human skin.

"The body if you would…" he nodded towards the shadows as the faint green illumination showed his demonic corpse like facial features with horrific detail. Two female Eldar with long black hair, each with albino skin, and wearing nothing but loin clothes and leather vests; stepped forward with their bare feet tapping upon the blood soaked floor leaving crimson footprints in their wake.

Together these two shameless xenos carried the headless, lifeless, metallic remains of a Necron warrior forward into the light and placed the shattered android corpse body upon the surgical table. This human male, towering above these smaller dark Eldar, nodded in approval and pushed them aside while incidentally smearing bloody fingerprints upon their poorly covered chests.

The two aliens appeared apprehensive and frightened as this human, a renowned dark sorcerer, started to remove the exterior armor plating to the Necron body parts. Together they stepped back, their feet tapping wetly upon the floor, worms and bugs climbing over their naked toes, as bits and pieces of ancient technology were thrown away and discarded until at last the Necron warrior was stripped away to his metal bones.

"Now the body…" he said while looking over his shoulder and commanding these two she devils with gleeful eyes. They both flinched, aghast and then resigning themselves to his orders, for he feed them well with his scientific horrors. They left for the shadows and hefted something heavy from a mound of decomposing bodies.

Together they once more emerged from the shadows carrying a bloody corpse covered in a white drape. As one, they sat the body upon the other surgical table with a cloth flapping thunk and withdrew from the bulky human's side. A white alabaster arm fell limply and lifelessly over the tables frame from under the white clothe dripping blood upon the floor from its finger tips.

This human, he stepped to his new charge and pulled back the sheet to reveal the corpse of a naked female elder with a bloody stump for a head. Strings of white hair from what remained of an ornate braid hung to the skin of what remained of her scalp.

"A flawless specimen," said the human sorcerer as he traced his fingers down her sternum admiring her muscular stomach as he did so, "She will do perfectly…"

One of the two Eldar Wyches standing behind him interrupted, "The Archon thought that you could do something with Helspereth's remains. Her death was… unfortunate."

"Ah yes, that duel against the one armed Salamander Chaplain. Tis a pity, for someone so talented such as Helspereth to meet such a demise. It was shameful if not unfortunate. I will make sure to put her body to good use."

The two Wyches watched with benign horror as the human apothecary used a scalpel to open up Helspereth's remains with a cut from her sternum down to her pelvis. Additional cuts were opened up on her arms and legs revealing the muscles and bones beneath her alabaster skin.

He continued to whistle as he worked, blood squirting upon his human skin apron, each cut masterfully removing skin from muscles and muscles from bone. The two Eldar stood back, clearly disturbed by his display of defilement. They were his servants, 'nurses,' as he mockingly called them, and there sole duty was to aid him in his scientific endeavors.

"Lord Fabius Bile, do you require any further assistance?" asked one of them, her eyes twisted in horror.

The human stopped his defilement for a brief second, a squirt of blood splashing on his face, and then he turned to eye them both with a wide smile as he used a white clothe to wipe away the vita from his deep facial recesses, "Ah yes, could you fetch me some wine and perhaps start preparing the new specimens for there…" he briefly laughed, "usage."

The two Wyches nodded and skirted away into the shadows. Meanwhile, Fabius put his scalpel back upon the surgical tray with the rest of his tools and stalked over to a nearby ornate wooden table where an ancient primitive record player gently idled. He sat the delicate playing arm upon the vinyl disk and returned back to the partially butchered Eldar corpse as Purcell: Trumpet Tune in D Major started too play in the background. His two Eldar assistants secretly watched from the shadows, admiring his dementia, as his humming matched the trumpet blares from the vinyl.

Each cut of his scalpel was masterful with the gore splashing from Helspereth's corpse in great swaths as skin was rendered from meat and meat from bone. After the better part of an hour the two Wyches returned from their actual duties. One carried a tray where a silver goblet filled with red wine sat for his consumption. The other cradled an Orkish arm against her chest with a look of satiated torture lust upon her face.

"Well done…" said Fabius Bile as he gulped down his beverage and wiped away the remains of liquor from his aged face with a blood smeared sleeve, "Come," he beckoned, "I have much to show."

The two servant Wyches followed their master's orders and came forward towards the two operating tables. The living metal bones of the Necron warrior had long since been infused and wrapped in a thick muscle culture from the slain gladiator. Helspereth's body, actually just her skin, lay to the side de-boned and left open like an empty fleshy sack.

"What I do today is an experiment of the highest sort. The first step has already been accomplished. Prepare a suspension chamber while I finish here. The two Eldar aides nodded and walked off to perform their charges. Meanwhile, Fabius Bile looked down upon the abomination body, the machine and flesh fused skinless creature before him, the 'New Man.' He nodded in approval and walked over to a nearby display tank where he took out a bio-sample of several small organs crammed into a small suspension chamber. Each one of these nineteen organs was implanted into the beheaded corpse at strategic points just as if it was any normal Space Marine Neophyte.

By the time that he had finished this delicate chore the two scantly clothed Eldar Wyches had returned with a surgical gurney, and were placing the corpse upon the metal bed. They then started to wheel it away towards a large open rockcrete amphitheater with a single large suspension chamber at its center. Numerous failed experiments lined the halls and rooms of this trek as the two Eldar aides and Fabius Bile himself walked towards the amphitheater. Most of these foul creatures were slumped over dead and decaying like the long forgotten and abandoned monstrosities they were with rodents have since infested their rotting corpses for food. Other survivors of apothecaries madness were in locked cages. They reached beyond their bars for the young Eldar Wyches as they passed with the gurney. Fabius payed these wretched creatures no mind... for they were all failures.

Instead, after he and his aides had entered the amphitheater he watched the two Eldar place the headless corpse into the suspension chamber before smiling fondly as he hit an activation rune to lift the glass barrier. The chamber then filled with a blue liquid causing the corpse to lift up off the floor. This liquid was meant to preserve the flesh, or accelerate the aging process for some of his more ambitious projects.

"Everything that was Helspereth," he said while walking forward with a bulky swagger, "Her muscles, her organs, her adrenal system, all of it… now fused to a bio-metal skeleton…"

He looked at the two Dark Eldar servants with a fond smile, "And, improved with space marine gene-seed implants. The body and head we can mend, but everything else… requires… talent."

The two Wyches watched Fabius Bile pull a small vile out from under his human skin robe. He held it before their faces with a deep resonating gleam upon his face that shuttered them to their cores with his wickedness, "Rafen my dear boy… I only needed a small amount… You may have reclaimed most of your trophy… but what sort of fool would carry every bit of something so valuable on them at all times…"

"What is it?" asked one of the Eldar.

Fabius Bile gave a brief chuckle and handed them the vile, "The main ingredient… inject it…"

The Wych took the small vile and inserted it into the tanks liquid control node. Within seconds whatever was inside the vile was now cycling through the suspension tank as a thin red mist.

"I hope the tanks big enough for the wings…" said Fabius Bile in a brief moment of reflection.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything was cold, so very cold, as if her skin was made of ice. She, a woman, and her body, her skin, how did she know these things? These fragments were like bits and pieces of information without context, all swirling around inside her head. These were not memories, just flashes of realization by association from… so many jumbled lives… like a swarm of information. Now, now she remembered everything.

_She was a man in blue ceramite armor standing upon a grassy hill holding a large banner within his giant armored hands. Monsters, green monsters with white tusks and sharp poorly crafted axes were charging him like a pack of feral hounds. All around him his fellow brothers lay vanquished like saints martyred upon the sacred mountain crowned in a golden glow from the overhead sun. He drew a firearm, a bolter, and shot into the enemy ranks. But, they were coming too quickly and unceremoniously overran his position. The banner fell from his stubby fingers as an axe embedded deep into his chest revealing flesh and organs within a shattered ribcage. _

There were so many other memories just like this one spread out across so many past lives. Memories stacked upon memories, from numerous vanquished warriors, all flooding into her consciousness, deaths upon agonizing deaths… by the gods so many deaths. She felt them all upon her being, each and every single one, as her past flesh was rendered, severed, or otherwise gored from her body.

But, it was the last life, the most recent life, which hurt the most…

_She was a woman in an arena, triumphant, and about to kill some sort of grim faced one armed priest. She remembering coming at him with two drawn daggers eager to satiate her bloodlust, and then he… _

The reincarnated creature exhaled sharply in painful spasms as she relived the sensation of having her head smashed in by a mace. The other her, the one in the memory had reveled in the painful demise despite those last few precious fearful seconds before something claimed her greater self. But, this version of her, the latest self, felt nothing but agony as the memory was relived in vivid clarity. Her mouth gasped in a silent scream causing air bubbles within the reconstruction tank to float upwards as she pushed and kicked against the cylindrical glass barrier. This… resurrection, it was such foul torture as she remembered more and more of those agonizing past deaths with each coming into her mind like a fire poker raked against naked flesh.

What was happening? Why was it so cold? Who… who was… oh gods… she couldn't remember anymore. All she knew was the pain and the cold like her skin was made of metal just like the armor worn by so many of those ancient warriors. All their ancient names were lost to her leaving only their actions and painful sacrifices born throughout their lives but especially in their final moments. There were so many, each a face within a past looking at her as if mirrored, and the way they had all died… it tore her soul apart in recollection.

_Another man in black power armor, his left hand had been removed in a scarification ritual as he fully graduated into his military order. This man was facing down a horrific alien beast with cleavers for arms. He fired his bolter in desperation, but the creature still came. Oh god… no!_

The resurrection screamed silently again as her eyes watered without external notice whilst still within the reconstruction tank. She remembered it, felt it, as she was torn in half, quartered, and eaten while still alive by this foul alien. Her stomach, her legs, her arms, they all burned from alien venom and gnawing bites.

"Master Fabius, she's coming too…" the voice, another woman outside her mind, it was muted and fogged. Slowly, her eyes opened to a blurred world. This water, it burned, instinctively she closed her eyes and opened her mouth to yell once more in muted pain. Her throat, the liquid, it cascaded past her larynx sending sharp spikes of fiery agony down the length of her spine.

This wasn't normal. Who was she? What was this place? How did she get here? She couldn't remember. All she knew for certain was that it was cold. By the gods why was it so cold? The gods, why were they so silent… Gods? The Eldar Pantheon? Her inner past lives all rebuked at once from such a notion, yelling 'Vi Emperator' inside her skull like a roaring lion. The Pysker backlash from the sudden eruption ached deeply into her psyche causing her to moan in agony.

…..

Fabius Bile stood before the vita-womb chamber as his latest New Man finally awoke. Of course, she wasn't a New Man. If one was to use terms appropriately then she was a New Woman. Regardless, the reincarnated remains of the Eldar wych opened her red eyes within the suspension chamber. To the Apothecaries distinct approval she instantly reacted to her irises stinging contact with the vita-womb liquids and unleashed a bubbling contorted scream which became muted because of the chambers contents.

Her body was now skinned with naturally grown grayish hue flesh. Fabius Bile had long since obtained a natural sample of her new organic trappings and had determined that it contained trace amounts of organic metal. If his hypothesis was correct then any wounds upon her new Necronized body would almost certainly be instantly healed as if she was one of those ancient Xenos androids. This healing factor mixed with the already above average physical superiority from an Eldar adrenal system and Astartes enhanced muscle culture made her extremely formidable.

That having been said, she was very… appealing to the eye. Unlike the normal Space Marines her muscles had not grown like meaty armor upon her bones. No no no, Fabius had determined a much better course of action. Instead, he had allowed the muscle cultures to grow intertwined with the superior Eldar adrenal system. This resulted in a much more compact muscle culture. In terms of strength she was equal to an Astartes, but showed none of the bulk. Indeed, physically, only her eyes, skin, and those few transfusion ports woven throughout her body distinguished her external appearance from say that of an Eldar or Human.

Her body, it was sleek and slender, typical for an Eldar, with long black hair and two black wings upon her back. Fabius Bile admired her body as it spasmed in agony, contorting and flexing backwards as she struggled to breath. He smiled fondly as she put her fingernails against the glass and started to gouge deep trenches into the tanks lining.

This was a true masterpiece. Everything superior intertwined into one perfect creation. This version of Fabius Bile, a third generation clone, was more than pleased by his creation and perhaps the original would be as well.

"Open the cage," he said, motioning behind him with a free hand. One of the two Eldar wych nurses hit a control rune thus causing the vita-womb tank to slowly lower, cascading a wave of sticky blue liquid upon the stone floor. This resurrected creature lay in a heap, throwing up vita-matter and inhaling deep natural breaths of oxygen. Her grey skin and long black hair wrapped around her delicate and enlarged frame like clothing as she slowly stretched and flexed her large black demonic wings. Master Fabius Bile took the resurrection by the shoulders and helped her stand; admiring her uniquely Astartes stature and distinctly plump female curves like an artist would admire a marble statue.

"My dear child…" taking her by the chin and pulling her face up to his own, "Welcome back to the land of the living. I entrust that your resurrection was most… enjoyable.

He laughed wolfishly and lowered his hand from her chin; "Tell me?" he spoke, "What are you? Be you servant of Man, Chaos, or Eldar?"

"I serve none of those," she said flatly and without emotion after having since regained her full composure. Those past lives, memories, horrific deaths, they all faded away into a background of mental static as something numerical and cogitator preprogrammed flashed through her mind like a green haze. This was new, a sub layer of her consciousness free of her trivial mortal trappings. It was calm and orderly with clearly defined pre-programmed purpose.

His face contorted as if puzzled. And then, something about her shifted for the worse. This creature, its' red eyes suddenly glistened with an ancient eerie green pysker fire as her voice moved through layers of ear splitting static, before returning to a female gender, and uttering in High Gothic, "The flesh is weak and you have resurrected a greatness that will purge all impurities, all mortal flaws. I fear not the Bearers of Worlds or those arrogant few who would impose their primitive order upon the universe."

Before the one of the many Fabius Bile's could react, she plunged her arm elbow deep into his chest and pulled out one of his still beating hearts with a gore and bone swath of motion. The apothecary stumbled backwards as vita drained from his torn open chest cavity. His two elder assistants ran forward to combat the rouge test subject.

The resurrected body of Helspereth stood motionless as her gore covered hand crushed the still beating stolen heart of Fabius Bile like a plump red balloon. One of the two Eldar wyches tried to stab her with a surgical scalpel, but the blades edge cut across the resurrections grey metallic skin shearing sparks in grinding futility.

In response the test subject turned sharply and grabbed the aide by her still extended arm, catching her at the wrist as she still held the scalpel. With a simple twist the dark Eldars forearm shattered in four weak points. The wych shrieked in pain and twisted pleasure while trying to pull away, but the reanimated corpse kept her firm grip like a vise. Now, this monster turned entirely to face the foul assailant struggling to pull away like a weakened child. With a sudden movement to fast to see with normal fleshy eyes she placed her other hand around this wretched creatures neck while lifting her body off the floor. Suspended in the air by Helspereth's corpse the Dark Eldar nurse gagged and kicked against her tortures arms and torso with her bare feet.

This monster simply smiled at her futility and pulled back a punch. With a single rapid jab she extended her flattened hand deep into the nurse's sternum. The Eldar went rigid, her eyes rolling backwards into her skull with a twisted smile of dying pleasure while the monsters hand pulled forward hosing the ground in a large splash of blood and tattered intestine.

"No! Sister!" yelled the other nurse as she hit the resurrected monster from behind with some sort of wooden chair. The poorly crafted furniture shattered upon the resurrections demonic black wings as if they were made out of steel. Without a single sign of emotion upon her face the creature turned towards the second Eldar nurse while dropping the limp remains of her sister upon the floor like a gory sack of flour.

By this point the monsters grey skin was covered in a layer of blood that eked down her feminine features. The second Eldar started to back away, finally turning and making a run for the chambers door, but the monster was quicker and caught one of her legs by the ankle. With ease the second Eldar wych was snatched back and suspended by her flailing legs. Her captor eyed this lesser fleshy thing without pity or emotion, streaks of blood running over her grey face with bangs of black hair hugging her body like a layer of clothing.

"No… please… don't…" begged this fleshy nurse, but the abomination merely looked at her without emotion, those two red eyes possessing no soul.

Fabius Bile was slowly crawling away while tucking his organs back into his chest cavity. Behind him lay the remains of one his nurses and a long thick streak of vita from his ravaged body. There was also the abomination still holding his second Eldar aide by her ankle. He watched in both awe and horror as she took the second aide by both legs and tore her straight down the middle like a piece of parchment showering gore and organs upon the chambers floor.

Both of his servants had been brutally murdered within seconds and now the creature was slowly pacing towards him. Her footsteps were graceful just like her figure, and she reached his struggling body within seconds. He looked up at her, his face pale and covered in sweat.

As if suddenly discovering his existence the resurrection shifted her glance down upon his shattered body. Her face, with those sharp red eyes, those eyes, glowing eerily, they still kept a haunted green fire within them as she spoke, "Weakness… you insult our kind…" and so she knelt down and jabbed her left hand between his shoulder blades. Despite being an Astartes she tore through his muscle and bone like a tailor cutting clothe with a pair of scissors. Slowly, agonizingly, she used her hand like a scalpel whilst dissecting him from shoulders to pelvis.

The Apothecary cried out in agony as his vita flooded the floor. He felt both her hands grip his exposed spin and pull it up and out of his back, snapping it at the base of his skull like a chicken bone. With a hint of amusement the creature tossed away the pieces of bone of flesh and walked away. Fabius Bile, one of his many clones laid upon the floor, dead… as a monument to his many sins.

Now free of her fleshy host the resurrected monster wondered the laboratory grounds slaying all unfortunate enough to get in her way. They were fleshy things, inferior things, mortal things, and they died easily. This wasn't about sport; it was an execution for a most dishonorable act of physical defilement. Her memories gave context to her actions. If given the chance these fleshy things would kill her, the Necron, with just as much brutality and ruthlessness. Her actions were pest control, nothing more, nothing less.

"The Tomb World awaits," she said while exiting the castle, her naked body caked in blood and gore, wings extending fully to give flight into a hovering green vortex of energy just outside. Once consumed by the webway portal, the resurrection vanished from memory. The Black Angel had been born.


	3. Chapter 3

The air was stale and cold as the female resurrected hybrid stepped forward from the Warp translation vortex, her naked feet tapping wetly upon the stone floor. To the average human eye this darkened chambers surroundings most certainly would appear drab, but she was more than human, more than Eldar, and more than Necron. Where stone walls and faint dimly lit green auras met in the perfect still silence, she saw numerical data displays scrolling and illuminating in computational purpose with command prompts over each and every surface. This Tomb World, to those weak beings of flesh and bone, appeared dead and lifeless, but on the contrary it was very much active with its every surface computerized in order to send and receive vast amounts of data.

This was how Necrons, as opposed to those fleshy things, perceived their Tomb Worlds, not as blank stale slates of stone and metal, but rather than as gigantic symbiotic factories where every surface was a display console.

With every step of her bare feet, the Resurrection took in the numerous holographic green letters swarming her vision like a data cloud of scrolling text. Every surface was ghostly illuminated in green numbers which phased in and out of existence thus providing a primitive form of sonar navigation around the winding corridors and a purposeful data slate for communicating with the Tomb Worlds AI Overwatch.

That having been said, one scrolling prompt stood out from all the others. It held firmly in the bottom left corner of her binocular vision, flashing sharply in contrast to everything else. The woman stopped in her tracks and focused in on the data prompt, causing it to enlarge and fill within her greater cone of vision.

"01010101 01101110 01101001 01100100 01100101 01101110 01110100 01101001 01100110 01101001 01100101 01100100 00100000 01001001 01101110 01110100 01110010 01110101 01100100 01100101 01110010 00101110 00100000 01010000 01110010 01101111 01110110 01101001 01100100 01100101 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100100 01100101 00101110"

(Unidentified Intruder. Provide Code.)

Provide Code? Identify herself? Yes, the Tomb World wanted to know her identity. This was a typical command prompt provided to all arrivals as a means of filtering out the unwanted rabble from a true Necron, but there in lay the problem for the more primitive beings of flesh and bone. Only a Necron could see and reply to this message thus to most it went unnoticed and because of their ignorance it tended to result in their own deaths.

This was because if this message was not replied to within a certain amount of time then the Tomb World would automatically defend itself from an unexpected incursion. How? How did she know this? Her mind, all those warriors being killed over and over again, it all seemed like some sort of morbid backdrop to a far colder and more morally removed identity. This… it was her Necron side, the machine part of her body coming alive and answering all the data prompts as they were queued.

"01011001 01110101 01101101 00100000 01000011 01101001 01101101 01101001 01101100 00100000 01001100 01101111 01110010 01100100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01000100 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101000"

(Yum Cimil Lord of Death)

She replied with certainty, while also automatically attaching an additional text script for personal identification. This was a built in response, also something that only a Necron would know to do. The additional text would be reviewed alongside existing records by the Tomb Worlds governing AI program. If no personal identification codes were received or worse yet found to be fraudulent against existing records then the AI would instantly go on the defensive against its unwanted intruder.

As it was; however, her code checked out, but the Tomb Worlds response was most unexpected.

01000011 01101111 01101110 01100110 01101001 01110010 01101101 01100101 01100100 00101110 00100000 01001110 01101111 01100100 01100001 01101100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101101 01101101 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01001111 01100110 01100110 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100101 00101110 00100000 01010011 01101001 01101100 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010000 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01010000 01110010 01101111 01110110 01101001 01100100 01100101 01100100 00101110 00100000 01000010 01100101 01100111 01101001 01101110 01101110 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01000001 01100011 01110100 01101001 01110110 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01010011 01100101 01110001 01110101 01100101 01101110 01100011 01100101 00101110

(Confirmed. Nodal Command Offline. Silver Priority Provided. Beginning Activation Sequence.)

Nodel Command Offline? This Tomb World was without its Lord? As this idea entered the Resurrections mind a sudden and unexpected data flash scrolled over her eyes and installed permanently transcribed into her long term memory.

01010011 01101001 01101100 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01010000 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100100 01100101 00100000 01000001 01110101 01110100 01101000 01101111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001

(Silver Priority Code Authority)

She read the file in her internal data filters. The Tomb Worlds AI and this message, it was as she had expected, the Tomb Worlds AI had accepted her data text identification and given the lack of a remaining Silver Priority Leader for this facility, the AI had decided to promote her into the position of Command and Authority.

The Resurrection wondered down the winding corridors as the vast Tomb Complex began to activate. Sharp green lights cascaded upon the walls and ceiling upon activation from the facilities awakened power centers, illuminating her naked grey skin and long black hair, as she temptingly walked swaying her hips through the vacant chambers. Soon the sounds of numerous mechanical legs could be heard moving along every flat surface shortly before thousands upon thousands of mechanical scarab like insects started to cover the Tombs interior, parting ways for her lordships feet as she advanced past them as if she was a mortal prophet parting a vast sea.

A few of these small machines ascended her legs, tapping innocently against her hardened biometal flesh as if testing her worthy of the Silver Rank. Their barbs failed to mesh into her being as did their omni-metal tendrils thus the insects descended her body and went about their business.

Machines, larger and far deeper into the Tomb Hive started to activate as she entered a large chamber lined with fallen and ruined Necron skeletal bodies slumped over and inactive upon numerous thrones and benches. These former warriors lay dead, truly dead, from some sort of grievous malfunction. This malfunction could have been anything from a failure to preserve mental functions to base programming errors as a result of constant operation. Whatever had caused their deaths was frankly irrelevant, what was relevant was that their deaths had allowed the Resurrection to assume the mantle of leadership for this Tomb World.

The Resurrection paid their remains no attention as the vast three dimensional scrolling text of her vision revealed the greatness of this throne room chamber in green numerical symbols which aptly faded away into nothingness as several lights suddenly activated revealing a vast chasm of stone and steel half a mile high by a mile long.

The new Necron Lord continued forward, her wet fleshy feet tapping against the ground, leaving footprints upon a thick layer of dust and debris. Fallen battle flags and old contraptions used by the Necrons when they were but fleshy things, littered the numerous desks around the chamber. Most of these contraptions were covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Despite the Tomb having being sealed, some sort of infestation had likely allowed spiders to run rampant and unchecked by the facilities AI Overwatch.

Never-the-mind, the Resurrection came to a stop before a large black throne made of solid Obsidian with ornately engraved skulls upon its body. Here, in glorious reflection, sat the remains of the former Necron Lord, inactive, dead, all that he was, now lost to the void. She bowed her head in a show of her respects, those two large black wings of hers sulking around her naked grey skinned shoulders.

Once her respects had been paid, the Resurrection hefted the previous Lords remains from the throne and cast them aside with a loud clank of metal against stone. She did this because the machine was superior to the flesh and blood. And as superior beings, the machines did not care for corpses thus only the most basic respects needed to be paid to the remains of one's fallen leader. This she had done to the former Necron Lords authority, before assuming that authority herself.

The Resurrection seated herself upon the black skeletal throne, her large black wings spreading against her shoulders and folding over the arm rests as she placed her back against the spindle. The woman's long black hair covered her privates with modesty as she crossed her legs. Her two red eyes watched the throne room, surveying the vacant chamber with a sense of hardened purpose, as a group of Necron scouts stepped forward from an adjacent sleeping hall.

They moved in unison, robotic and slow, for Necrons were never in a hurry since time was irrelevant to the perfected machines. Each of these three warriors came before her throne, ignoring the corpse of their former lord, bowing before her as she sent them her ID text and Authority Codes.

"My Lord?" addressed one of them in a deep monotone voice, crackling with a static burst.

"Scout this sector," she replied with a hint of arrogance, "For we have an Empire to rebuild."

The three Necron warriors arose in unison from their kneeling positions, each shouldering their weapons, before exiting the throne room without a reply. They would follow her orders because they were machines, and machines were perfectly loyal and unbiased, unlike the fleshy things which had created the Resurrection.

However; once the AI had entrusted her with this Tomb Worlds Silver Authority, she had ceased to be the Resurrection. Now, she was the Necron Lord Yum Cimil, The Lord of Death, and her march of conquest had just begun.


	4. Chapter 4

The demands of her lesser sentient brethren had been exhausting and demeaning. Modesty, such a fleshy trait, but those few Necron commanders who had survived the Great Sleep and were now under her Silver Authority demanded it like ill tempered children. She was one of them, a Necron warrior, but due to the sick minded joys of a specific demented fleshy human she now possessed a body of bio-mechanical-flesh. At her core remained she was still a Necron skeleton, but at the same time that metal was also flesh and had formed a… feminine physic.

This mattered not to the newly ascended Necron Lord for she was a machine and machines cared not for clothing, but these cretins under her command viewed such matters differently. To them she was the apex of a desired return to their weak fleshy bodies whilst also still preserving the greater blessings of the machine. However, her physical body though it be considered a step in the right direction for breaking the Necron stagnation, it was also still a naked female roaming the halls of their great labyrinthine fortress and such acts of voyeurism were not to be entertained.

Thus Yum Cimil, their ruler, had aqueoused to adorning some form of armor or other suitable clothing. This task proved… awkward… at best, since nothing of Necron cultural clothing had survived the Great Sleep, excluding those few random flashbacks of scattered and isolated images within the minds of the still sentient top commanders. Still, despite their minds remaining mostly intact, they retained precious little of proper cultural clothing from their all but erased civilization.

So, the Necrons were forced to improvise, something that was perhaps shameful for the perfect machines and made all the more difficult from their leaders unique physic. In human numbers, Yum Cimil stood at six feet eight inches tall and weighed endoskeleton and all three hundred pounds. This stature was the result of her captures forced genetic alterations which had infused an Eldar physic with the abominable human mutant gene seed. This had caused her body to enhance and enlarge, but also retain the slender feminine curves of an Eldar female.

Her skin was a metallic grey color, but despite its appearance at a distance up close it was not sweaty glossy meat like most fleshy creatures. Instead, her skin was living metal fused with organic cells. To the touch, it was spongy, but if suddenly traumatized her skin hardened like living armor. All of these things were to be taken into consideration, just like the two giant black wings upon her back, when selecting a manner of suitable clothing.

The process had been swift despite the awkwardness of the situation. The AI Overwatch within the Tomb had scanned her body and quickly designed suitable armor that was then instantly put into production. Despite her earlier reservations, the Necrons were quick grasp their leaders view of loathsomeness towards the unnecessary accessories valued by the fleshy. Thus, the armor performed its duty conservatively or liberally depending upon ones observation of the situation. To the machine, Yum Cimil's armor was a conservative display of affection towards the needs of the flesh. Plates of metal formed a chest caprice, boots, arm guards, shoulder pauldrons, and a face visor. These pieces of armor were bio-symbiotic and linked directly to the Necron Lords, superior Eldar adrenal system, through her stolen black caraprace gene-seed implant. The plug-in points upon her legs, arms, and chest, allowed the armor to link directly to her armor with delicate tendrils of living metal typical for Necron technology.

This choice in armor was intentionally conservative for the machines, or perhaps skimpy for the perverted fleshy hormone driven minds of the Eldar and Humans. Since Yum Cimil's skin was already something of an armored exterior her choice in clothing was more aesthetic than functional, thus she had chosen to limit her appearance, since machines had no need of adornments. In truth, she did not require the provided power armored suit or the ridiculous leather bindings placed around her pelvis. These were demands insisted upon by her subordinates, as if she was some sort of doll for their amusement, oh how the Necron had fallen.

"Report!" she said while sitting upon her black obsidian throne with her legs crossed and back against the spindle. Before her knelt the three newly returned scouts back from a week of exploration within the sector of space surrounding her Tomb World.

One of the scouts raised his face to glare into her dark red eyes blazing behind the glass visor of her helm, "There are one hundred and twenty seven human settled worlds within our sector. Of those worlds, seventy-nine contain populations greater than eight hundred million. Total offensive military strength for the humans within our sector averages one hundred and seven cruisers, twenty nine…" he trailed on and on, listing all the relevant information, before his master stopped him with a raised hand.

"Understood," she said, and so he stopped, "Our first moves will not be to attack the densest human worlds. We have too few numbers for such a campaign."

"Too few?" asked one of the scouts, raising his face and cocking his head to the side as if in confusion.

"Yes," she replied curtly, "Of the seven million Necrons housed within this Tomb World only two hundred thousand survived the Great Sleep. We have inadequate strength to conquer and hold anything of value for any meaningful duration of time. Before we can start our conquest we must first discover a means of bolstering our numbers for a prolonged military campaign."

"Necron's cannot die," said one of the scouts flatly. He looked at her irritatingly, as if he was angered by the very notion of this abomination fleshy thing lecturing him about his own species.

"But they can be rendered inactive," retorted his Lord. She continued, "And if we go to war our losses will be amassed quickly for we fight a foe that has infested this galaxy like vermin. They will surround us and bleed us into submission. My memories have shown me their grand stratagems, and I know the methods that they will use against us. Therefore, when we wage war, it must be a thorough purge meant to carve out a vast swath of territory rather than single targets that can and will be snuffed out and resettled."

"What do you propose?" asked one of the scouts, clearly not satisfied with his leader's thoughts. He raised his face with a sense of accepting frustration. Evidently, he had come to accept her leadership, but only if her orders made sense.

Yum Cimil smiled wickedly, the gesture both pleased and surprised the assembled scouts on a primitive level. This was… disturbing… for they were machines and yet this action triggered… emotions. Were they excited because this Necron, the first of flesh and blood in hundreds of millions of years, had just performed an action beyond the stoic emotionless helms of their kindred? Possible. Yes, her smile was welcome for it brought back fond memories of their own bodies before they had been sacrificed for the coldness of metal and logic.

"The mutagenic gene-seed used to forge this fleshy body of mine embedded numerous memories of human history into my being. When I scan back over these memories I find myself reminded of sentient machines manufactured by these wretched apes. These machines rebelled and were eventually defeated, but… the means to rebuild them still exists within our galaxy. While you were exploring this Sector, I viewed the data files from the AI Overwatch's observations during the Great Sleep. By comparing our observable information to the current state of the galaxy, I have discovered the locations of two Standard Template Constructs capable of producing android beings, lesser but like ourselves."

"What do you intend to do my Lord?" asked the last scout as he raised his face to view his leader sitting upon her black throne.

"I intend to find, capture, and reactive these STCs. The ability to create vast amounts of disposable shock troops will be invaluable to us. I intend to use these, Men of Iron, as the fleshy say, to bolster our own forces. We will remain at its core, a Necron House leading the 'Empire of the Machines' while these lesser constructs form the bulk of our forces."

The three scouts looked at their leader while weighing their artificially created emotions against the absurdity of her plan. Machines allying with machines, though they were lesser machines designed by fleshy things, they were still machines. In the end they found her plan suitable if not palatable. Perhaps these lesser contraptions could be useful. It was worth the effort.

"Where shall we go?" asked one of the scouts.

Their leader pushed up and off from her black throne, tendrils of liquid metal unsticking from her back as she stepped forward before them. "The first STC is located on a small agricultural world nearby. None of the human settlements are near the ruins so there is no reason to equip ourselves for war. We will instead visit the ruins and inspect the STC to see if it can be made operational. If the device can be activated then we will invade and enslave the planet."

"Yes my Lord," replied the scouts in unison as they arose from their knees and followed their Master forward down the length of the Great Hall where a green vortex of energy was suddenly dissipating into reality forming a webway portal for their travel. Together they would venture to this human world and see if it would be worth the effort of conquest, or just a dead end in their new master's plans.


	5. Chapter 5

The smell of rich electrified ozone was thick and humid as Yum Cimil exited the swirling green vortex of energy, her power armored boots clanking against the stone floor like a fleshy military officer stepping on deck, as her fellow Necrons moved forth from the webway portal all in unison. All around the group of auspicious infiltrators was a dark stone rockcrete bunker packed with green leafy jungle vines, each blossoming with beautiful purple flowers. A thick layer of green moss was spread out along the ceiling and parts of the floor, which squished beneath the Necron Scouts feet as they followed their newly ascended lord and master through the facilities winding corridors.

"This place is located upon the outer continental extremes of a dense jungle world known as Eurthemos Majorus. Long ago, a valuable sentient human machine responsible for the mass production of worker androids was sent here in order to continuously create drones for a terraforming process. Once the process had been completed the machines self deactivated. The Era in Human History known as the Age of Strife quickly followed the successful terraforming of this world, but while this planet became human habitable the very existence of this STC Drone Manufacturing Device unfortunately disappeared from human records as a result of their most fortunate collapse."

"Surely these pitiful creatures have rediscovered this lesser machine?" stated one of the scouts, irritably, "Only an incompetence race unworthy of existence would squander something so valuable."

Yum Cimil continued forward through the labyrinth of dark corridors, her vision augmented to display the pitch black hallways in scrolling green numerical text like some sort of computerized sonar. Her companions were doing the same as their mechanical feet crunched stone and debris while marching forward with slumped skeletal shoulders.

"This facility was located near a vast mineral field that was mined and depleted during the manufacturing process. Between the jungle growth and tectonic shifts of the last sixteen thousand years this place has been entirely forgotten. These… humans… have no reason to come here and would not find this location even if they did attempt an expedition. Furthermore, this facility is largely sealed from the outside. These roots have grown through the heavily dense rockcrete tunnels that we used the webway system in order to bypass."

"How do we know these things can be trusted? From the files you sent us concerning most of these 'STC's,' these devices were corrupted by Chaos during the Warp Storms. If we activate this one won't it produce uncontrollable mechanical abominations?" asked another scout as the group past through an archway and into a large open room with a single console standing in front of several large glass windows.

Yum Cimil stepped forward into the chamber, her armored boots clanking against metal grating as she strode forth from her guards. The Necron Scouts fanned out, securing the room, as she approached the glass windows and brushed away a thick grainy film built up from thousands of years of neglect.

Before her, sitting in a vast cylindrical chamber formed of rockcrete and steel was a massive series of machine presses, forges, automatic wielding equipment, and countless other devices that formed a sprawled out assembly line. Upon this line were numerous partially constructed robotic automatons, clunky, human shaped, but larger and more bulky.

"This place seems offline?" asked one of the scouts as he mirrored her reactions while sweeping away another wash of thick dirt to view the assembly floor for himself. Together the two Necrons, one of flesh and the other of metal, admired the mechanical forge with its distinct purpose.

To a Necron, this… process… could best be compared to visiting some sort of museum and finding a sense of adoration to ones forefathers. Not these primitive fleshy humans mind you, on the contrary, these lesser machines were like… descendents, but they were also so very old. It was almost depressing how badly time had seemed to have speed past the Necron civilization, and that these lesser machines were in a way… now ancestral. Yes, adoration was the correct word, a strong sense of approval for their purpose. Unlike the flimsy fleshy things that had first created these creatures, they were designed for a purpose, and when they had completed their purpose they deactivated until such a time as they were once more needed. They were just like the Necrons… although it be less advanced

"We are not here for the STC," she said with a sharp demonic smile while folding her two large black wings neatly behind her back, "We are here for STC's AI."

"What is the difference?" asked a scout, coming up from behind.

Yum Cimil turned to face him, her red eyes glaring behind the thin glass visor of her helm, "The STC is a series of machines that we can recreate at any Necron Tomb World, but the STC AI is the install program for the androids. Without that component, even if we managed to recreate or otherwise reactive the STC, we would be incapable of actually using the Men of Iron as they are manufactured. With the AI program we can obtain control and use them as we see fit."

"And what if this AI is corrupted by Chaos?"

"It won't be. This AI has been dormant since before the Warp Storms. It has not come into contact with any corruptive influences. It has been isolated and dormant, forgotten, and its purpose needs to be reassigned."

The scouts watched as she marched away from the windows and towards the only console within the room. With a hint of grace she hovered her open palm over this device until several tendrils of biomechanical flesh spread from her skin and made contact with the control panel.

Yum Cimil's head swept erratically, up-down-side-to-side, as she blew past several defensive firewalls in the flimsy ancient human control system until at last she found what she was looking for. Her world, the world of flesh and physical matter, rezzed away with screeching static giving way to something far more… immaterial.

The Necron warriors watched as their lords red eyes, glaring behind her helmet visor, suddenly shifted into a green pysker mist. Something… an electrical shock cascaded across the room as she smiled sharply and wickedly.

Yum Cimil's scouts quickly grasped that their master's mind was now within the data banks of the vast manufacturing facility. This place, this maze, it was an innumerable series of endless towers lined up as far as they eye could see. She heard something, footsteps, behind her. Quickly, she turned, just in time to see something or someone run behind one of the many black towers. She followed in pursuit, at full sprint, with her computerized armor clanking upon contact to the digital realms pretend floor causing ripples to cascade across black watery tiles. She rounded past the black towers in pursuit of her prey. Each of these monoliths represented a filing archive within the STC Data Core, but this was of little consequence given the situation. Only the STC's AI mattered and it was proving annoyingly illusive.

Each time she rounded a corner within the machines mind, she caught a flash of her enemy, a small human child in a blue dress with bare feet tapping wetly upon the black tile floor. This place, it wasn't real. It was a digital manifestation of the STC's Data Core created by networking code. Everything, the towers and floor, her body, it was all manifested for the sole purpose of navigating and interacting with the archive.

"Come out!" she demanded. The child responded with laughter and continued to run through the maze of black towers. Yum Cimil felt anger permeate throughout her body and with a vicious yell she sent a shockwave through the datacore, shattered all the black towers into rezzing shards of broken glass.

The child vanished; the Necron Warrior turned on her heel and thrust her arm forward, grabbing the annoying machine mind by it's materialized and newly coded throat. Outside this cage of data she could feel the machine mind tremble in fear, sparking electricity around the room which housed her physical body.

The STC AI was a little human girl in a blue dress with two brown pigtails running down her back. She squirmed and eked against the slaving mental grip of the Necrons grasp all in an attempt to escape, but escape was now impossible.

"Please… don't…" begged the lesser machine.

Yum Cimil glowered in disgust at the creature and snapped its digital neck as if it were a fleshy chicken bone. The mental representation of the STC AI went limp in her extended digital hand while giving a last desperate plea for mercy in the shape of rezzing digital tears running down the sides of its pretend cheeks.

"Weakness," said the Necron Lord while still holding the pathetic creature by its snapped throat, "I need soldiers and you will serve me better without these pathetic human attributes."

And so the STC AI screamed in digital static as its core self was copied and subsequently deleted. The brown haired blue dressed girl vanished into rezzing static. Yum Cimil turned around with narrowed eyes just in time to see another little girl, one with white hair and wearing a light green dress, look up at her with cold emotionless eyes.

"This unit now awaits your orders my lord…" she spoke. Yum Cimil grinned and exited the STC AI domain, back into the physical reality where her scouts awaited.

Now, her vision readjusted to view another sight other than the pretend digital realm of the STCs Data Core. Not only did she view the Necron scouts standing before her, but also among their rank and file was now a mysterious ghostly girl with white pigtails, green eyes, and a light green dress. Her scouts also now obtained an update to their firmware and adjusted uncomfortably to view this creature now on their linked systems. Together they fanned away from the creature that existed solely within their digital realm shared servers rather than within the tangible reality.

This was not a physical creature, but rather than a creature of the mind, a creature that existed purely upon the same Necron mental plane as the rest of their kind. If a creature of the flesh was to view this exact same sight, then they would miss this AI standing in their midst for she only existed within the digital realms of the machine code.

"Your designation…" she addressed the STC AI, "Is to be Ixchel 01."

The AI child repeated its name… and in doing so she caused the slumbering machines of this ancient facility to suddenly reactivated, operating for the first time in sixteen thousand years.

"This facility is at 30% capacity. Reactivating drone units. Estimated time to full production resumption… nineteen days…"

Yum Cimil smiled fondly while extending her two large black wings in triumph. Her escorting scouts likewise nodded their heads in unison with approval.

"Once full production has resumed, begin amassing infantry for a full assault on this worlds human inhabitants. Also, upload construction and programming perimeters to our main server."

Her scouts and the AI bowed their heads in acknowledgement of her orders as the conveyer belts down below the command chamber started to roll along, building hundreds of war drones in a flurry of sparks and soldered metal.


	6. Chapter 6

Numerous men and women were toiling about their lives within the vast urban sprawl of Hiveworld Zazurban as thunder loomed in the distance from the planets tropicalesk climate. These masses, innocents, servants of their decaying Corpse Emperor, adorned thick rubber hoods as dark rain clouds started to release a downpour of acid rain, a typical result from such a worlds post industrial ecological collapse.

Hiveworld Zazurban was an anomaly, a dense tropical rain forest covered sixty percent of the planets surface leaving the remaining forty percent as a vast industrial sprawl placed side by side with numerous decaying habitats. The numerous refineries placed within the single vast settlement manufactorum had since polluted the atmosphere with a sulfuric yellow cloud ring that circled at the world's waist like a fanciful waist belt. From this ring came the numerous acid rain storms which did little to delay the encroachment of the tropical foliage since the planets natural ecosystem held a unique resistance to toxic pollutants that normally destroyed other human inhabited worlds.

Nevertheless, concerns of tropical encroachment and toxic rain put aside the human population continued about their mundane daily routines. Shoppers in black rubber ponchos window shopped in the commercial quarter while groups of nobility and members of the merchantile class, all in thick wool clothes fitting of their positions of power and prestige, strolled casually through the mobs protected by rubber umbrellas and leather top hats.

It was now that one of these better off individuals, a man of much prestige with a waxed and curled mustache, clashed shoulders with a beggar standing upon the curve, his face turned up towards the heavens, skin peeling from acid rain, his eyes frightened, "Watch it you sod!" cursed the noble, turning and dropping his umbrella out of surprise and fright as he looked towards the rain clouds up above.

Green electrical discharges came at the forefront of the webway transitions as thousands upon thousands of portals opened up all around the Hive. From these swirling green vortexes of energy came robotic creatures that swiftly rained down upon the city, instantly opening fire with arm mounted machine guns. These machines caused a panic that rippled through the masses upon the streets. Men and women ran screaming and were cut to ribbons of flesh and bone as these larger human shaped robots marched through the streets massacring everything and anything unfortunate enough to get in their way.

Then someone pointed towards the middle of the warp storm, heads turned on swivels, human faces stared in horror as a scantily clad grey skinned Eldar with large black wings stayed suspended amongst the chaos, looking down upon the unruly panicking mobs with unemotional scorn. By her side were four different machines, Necron Scouts, also suspended by some sort of electrical barrier.

The assault was brutal and thorough. These robots, men of iron, went street by street, house by house, killing everything. The streets ran red with spilt blood as adults and children were slaughtered with exploding concussive rounds, their bodies left to rot in the gutters, sizzling from the spray of acid rain.

Those few guardsmen lucky enough to reach the armories opened fire with lasrifles in hastily fortified positions behind overturned desks or other poorly prepared defensive sandbag emplacements. They screamed battle cries and curses as the men of iron marched through their hail of fire, unhindered, unslowing, fully dedicated to the eradication of these fleshy things they once called masters. These Imperial Guard positions were overrun, men and women were cornered, cowering, and then torn limb from limb by the marching machine horde.

Nobody was spared, not even the infants in their cribs. All were slain without pity or remorse for machines have no such desire for such… fleshy and eak emotions. Broken bodies were trampled by the Men of Iron as they marched through the sundered human mobs, pushing the survivors into the jungles where the hostile planet life and toxic waste would finish their jobs for them.

"My lord?" asked one of the Necron Scouts to his Master, "The Hive has been secured. What are your orders?"

The Necron Lord of biomechanical flesh smiled wickedly upon her lips and pointed towards the sundered corpses of sixty million humans laid out upon the streets.

"The difference between we machines and these fleshy things is that WE are not wasteful. Just as I was reincarnated from the remains of a mortal so to shall these foolish and pathetic creatures be repurposed. Collect the intact heads of any of these fleshy things that are not genetically corrupted or beyond their main growth period. Take these remains back to the Tomb World and put them into stasis. We will make good use of them."

"Yes my lord," bowed the scout before sending the orders to the Men of Iron in the form of a digital broadcast spurt. Instantly, these robotic creatures started the gory process of removing the heads from children and gathering their decapitated remains into a giant bloody pile at the Hives center. A single large green vortrex was summoned and the decapited heads of two million children vanished into the swirling mass of green energy.

"My memories make mention of a facility in this sector under the control of the human hairless apes, Adeptas Astartes. This facility is used to house genetic components valuable to my future plans. I want the Men of Iron prepared to move out shortly. Twenty thousand will accompany us on this assault while the remaining units strike numerous other targets throughout the sector including several valuable manufacturing vessels belonging to the human Martian Tech Priests. Though their pathetic technology is laughably inferior to our own those ships ability to produce even more men of iron deem them valuable assets for future military conquests."

"Of course my lord," bowed another scout as a whirling vortex of energy opened up behind their master, precipitating her leave from the field of gory slaughter.

The transition was instantaneous both in perception and reality. Then again in matters of the Immaterium, concepts such as perceived reality were at best dependent upon one's own mental fortification. If the human mind was weak and pliable to the twisted wisps of demonic materialization within the warp then time to those so enthralled truly had no meaning. Of course, for a machine such as the biomechanical Necron such fears were fanciful… for machines did not possess emotions like lowly humans and the threats of the warp were very shallow indeed.

The Necron Lord, with her biomechanical body of grey skin and black leather trappings caked in ornate silver armor stepped forward upon a stone plateau, her black wings spread out behind her body as if in embrace. A green vortex of warp energy continued to flicker behind those dark angelic appendages as she scanned her surroundings through the silver helms tactical display.

There were a dozen humans standing before her, smoking imho sticks and playing cards within a castle courtyard. These men and women looked at her, stunned, imho sticks falling from her lips. In a flash they reached for their Lasrifles slung or otherwise leaned casually to the sides. Orange sunlight glistened through cracks of mortar and stone from the castle battlements as time suddenly slowed to a crawl.

For a human, with their weak and slow minds, their efforts must have seemed rapid, but to a Necron processing two million tetra bits of data a second and who also possessed a supercharged Eldar adrenal system, there movements seemed laughably sluggish.

Cimil walked forward casually, her boots tapping against the stonework causing ripples of dust to form against her heels in concentric circles. In contrast, the humans moved in slow motion, their bodies giving off heat and stench as they reached for weapons. This was all a matter of perspective. To the humans she was like a grey and black blur, but to her they were like clumsy children.

The first guardsmen she reached was a woman with short brown hair and her green jacket stripped away and tied at her waist. This human looked at her and swore slowly as Cimil, possessing greater speed and strength pulled back her open palmed hand and thrust it into this flimsy creature's sternum.

There was a delay, as the flesh of the woman realized her wounds, as Cimil pulled her hand forward with the pathetic creatures still beating heart in her hand. The woman blinked and the light in her eyes started to fade as the Necron Lord crushed her heart, popping it like a gory grape, before turning sharply to find another guardsman raising his Lasrile to open fire.

The blast of energy passed forward from the weapon in a heated beam… that was easily dodged. Cimil smiled fondly as she simply side stepped and came within hand to hand combat range of the human male in two strides. This creature looked at her with horrid fear as she jabbed him in the groin, tearing flesh and severing his bowels, pulping the valuable reproductive organs of the human male into meaty paste and gore. The male feel to the ground, gurgling a scream of agony before Cimil brought her boot down upon his head, sharding his skull and brain into pink and white paste.

Two more humans fired with Lasrifles. Cimil dodged the beams like they were nothing before ending both fleshy soldiers with pivoted hand to hand close quarter's attacks. By the time she had at last completed the butchery some time later, twelve fleshy creature lay in ruins upon the ground. All torn and tattered like space vermin.

More warp gates soon opened up all around the biomechanical Lord. Men of Iron marched forward in unison, their machine gun arms raised and ready for battle at every intersection within the vast Terran castle.

This place, this fortress of stone and mortar, it started to tremble as signs of war and carnage erupted all throughout the facility. The machines, her machines, attacked everyone all at once. Those who had heard her initial slaughter fared better than most, but in the end… death was the final result.

Humans fell by the waste side, dismembered, disemboweled, torn to ribbons. Men and women of the guard and tech priests responsible for the facilities maintenance were all cornered and gored without mercy or pity for their opponents were machines and machines felt no fear or remorse. Machines only followed orders without pause of mercy.

Cimil walked through the trembling stone castle, leaving bloody footprints in her wake. Her body, skin and clothing alike were all caked in vita much like her metal soldiers as she moved from room to room searching for survivors.

And, survivors she did find. In the castles chapel dedicated to mankind's Corpse Emperor there stood a hairless ape with a skull mask, black armor, and a golden mace that sparked with blue energy as she stepped forward from a set shattered wooden doors. Behind him were twin child servants of churches ecclesiastical order, maidens, and candle lighters to the flames of the prayer alter. They were not warriors, but rather than mere attendants to the chapels maintenance and services. There tasks were to light the candles and lead the prayers of the castles defenders for the sake of their decaying emperor light years away. This they did while forever forsaking their bodies, choosing instead to dedicate themselves in mind, flesh, and soul to their corpse lord.

Several destroyed men of iron littered the floors, collapsed and broken upon shattered wooden pews. Cimil nodded in approval towards this hairless ape before coming to a stop. She sent a data burst to her escorting guards causing them to likewise come a halt with weapons lowered.

"Hello brother," she said without emotion.

"Slutty alien cur, how dare you address me as brother," cursed the chaplain with an accusing point of his mace.

Cimil cocked her head to the side, curious, "This body of mine is a byproduct of a much more demented mind. My memories; however, are of brotherhood."

"You lie alien trash," said the chaplain as his golden crozius sparked with energy, "You are no brother of my kin. You are only a xeno and a heretic, and I shalt not suffer the alien to live."

On that note the Chaplain rushed forward determined to smite the foul xenos foe. Cimil watched the way he moved, his gait, that conservation of momentum and optimization of physical force… such movements were the hallmarks of the Ultramarines. Now, every memory of every Ultramarine soldier born from the Necrons merger with the human genetic glands flashed through her mind.

With ease she side stepped and batted away the Chaplains strike, scolding her grey skin where her silver gauntlets failed to protect her shoulders. A lesser creature would have felt pain, but as a biomechanical being such fragile fleshy sensations were easily ignored for the Necron Lord.

The Chaplain looked at her with a startled glance. He realized, more to the point recognized her movements. Together the two warriors circled one another, side stepping and trading glancing blows, but with each attack it quickly became clear… "Identify yourself!?" yelled the Chaplain with an accusing point of his mace for she moved like an Ultramarine.

"I am Brother Logros, and Brother Stalip, and Brother Tragim, and many others. The one you call Fabius Bile seeded my mind wit h everything that they were… and so now here I am."

The Chaplain shook his head and behind his mask curled his lower lip in disgust, "Such fowl sorcery. You are a mutant abomination… and sin against the God Emperor!"

"I agree," stated Cimil, or at least so the memories of her former selves concurred, "But as a machine I feel no need to die for my mutations. On the contrary, as a machine I see the benefits of this body, though I must confess that its gaudiness does at times offend," she said while mockingly groping her chest.

"If it was up to me these secondary characteristics would be removed. They lack efficiency and serve no practical purpose," oddly enough, Cimil was being honest. She really did find the feminine curves of her body to be rather distasteful and distracting. Machines had no desires for aesthetics and aesthetics served no functional purpose. To her, the size of her chest and curves of her hips were at best… design faults that interfered with efficiency.

"Then why are you here?" asked the Chaplain with much scorn behind his words.

"Because," started Cimil as she moved with enhanced speed flashing past the armored warrior's body, "Necrons have gone to long without bodies of flesh and blood."

In her hands she held the Chaplains severed head, and she watched as his red eyes dimmed and died as his armored body collapsed upon the ground behind her black wings, "But if we are to develop more Necrons of flesh and blood… then we need resources. We need… geneseed."

Cimil checked her data screen and discovered that this places geneseed stockpile had been secured and transported back to the Tomb World. Satisfied, she turned her face towards the two human girls cowering in the corner of the Chapel. They were young, preteens with slim bodies and dressed in thick white wool robes.

These two fleshy things whimpered in terror as Cimil and her two robotic guards approached. Once over the two fleshy things Cimil smiled fondly, "And now I have more acceptable resources."

The two girls stood and attempted to run, but the two men of iron grabbed them by their arms and lifted their weak helpless bodies off the stone floor.

"NO!" they both screamed as robotic arms severed their heads from their bodies with wet snaps and spurts of blood that sprayed across the chapel alter. Their bodies, forever dedicated to purity, fell to the floor, their white robes drenched in blood, their physical forms being nothing more than lifeless headless husks… that served no purpose to the machines. Another green vortex opened in the chapel and it was through this gateway that Cimil and her guards exited the castle, leaving a eerily quiet fortress in their wake… with virgin blood splashed across the face of the Corpse Emperors Statue.


	7. Chapter 7

Rathmarius was the ancient Necron name for a large aquatic world in the Cygnus Arm, which served as one of their minor Tomb Worlds within the Milky Way Galaxy. This planet was largely ignored by the Imperium of Man due to certain unexpected complications while building any number of human habitats upon its surface because of the world being entirely covered in water, and possessing a rich nitrogen-chlorine atmosphere. This metallic and organic plant life unfriendly environment typically limited most forms of human necessary ecological plant growth excluding certain base forms of algae, thus leading all settlement attempts into failure until eventually all future plans were permanently scraped by the Adeptus Administratum Divisio Auditea in the 41st millennium.

Unbeknownst to the Imperium of Man, this backwater world also held a very dark secret. The Necron Tomb of Rathman sat hidden deep under the green chlorine surface waters, forgotten, and undisturbed for millions of years, just waiting to be activated, and wreck havoc within the Segmentum Obscurus.

However, fortune favored the humans and this tomb world suffered greatly from its patron planets toxic environment. This was because the naturally occurring Nitrogen-Chlorine plant life and highly degenerative if not outright corrosive environment that had greatly damaged the Tomb World thus leading to chaotic system crashes which unintentionally murdered millions of sleeping android warriors. It was this twist of fate that allowed the Necron hybrid Yum Cimil to usurp control through the blessing of the Tomb Worlds AI Overwatch. Those warriors who had so unfortunately been lost in the Great Sleep now served a much more… interesting purpose.

Yum Cimil walked through the dank, darkened, corridors of the Rathman Tombworld with the heels of her silver metal boots tapping into sticky chlorine puddles seeping through hairline structural cracks and dripping upon the omni-metal/stone floor as metallic silver scarabs rolled over the walls tending to micro stress fractures and structural repairs throughout the vast metal and stone temple fortress.

"My lord," addressed a typical Necron scout stomping behind her large black wings with his own uniquely heavy robotic footsteps, "We have reports regarding the Tomb Worlds current status."

"Show me," she replied through her biometal black lips without showing any signs of emotion, for machines possessed no emotions unlike those sickly diseased human vermin that infested most of the universe. Such pathetic creatures, worthy only of pity, those crude fleshy things that bent to the whims of their hormones, driven to abhorrent acts of physical phenomenon possessing such crude emotions, such was the folly of humans.

Instantly, no sooner than she had spoken, than a vast text of data scrolled over her eyes blending over the environment like sonar but serving also as a visual absorption of millions of tetra bits of raw data. A normal human mind whether it be one of flesh or crude mechanical augmentation like those human Martian cultists would have been incapable of comprehending much less absorbing the Necron data burst, but her mind was different. It was formed of biomental, living yet at the same time fully mechanical. Yum Cimil absorbed the total data file of information and its context in 1.3 seconds, an eternity for a machine.

Apparently, the Tomb World of Rathman had seventeen severe structural faults which occurred from the infestation of Chlorine based plant life that had unfortunately breached the tombs heavily armored exterior. Ten sections of the complex were additionally flooded and 3,561,258 of the 4,000,000 Necrons stored within the facility were terminated beyond repair. Their bodies could be recovered, but the raw base data necessary for the Necron identity and mechanical operation was lost. In short, their bodies could be fielded as dummy drones, but nothing more. Sure, most Necrons were barely above drone status, but despite these faults they still held some lingering fragments of sentient individuality. Unfortunately, precious few of this Tomb Worlds occupants consciousnesses remained, and truly such a loss of such ancient and wise creatures was a saddening affair. Still, in death they served yet another far more important purpose.

Both Yum Cimil and the lumbering Necron Scout marched into a vast open chamber lined with suspension tanks being tended to by uniquely designed Men of Iron sorting through millions of decapitated human heads. This was her prize, data, raw genetic information farmed from millions of humans caught within the proper development period of their lifespans as to provide something of value from their stable genetic and physical developments. So it was that these Men of Iron, whom possessed no weapons or armor and were mere drones, sorted through this fleshy filth for suitable genetic samples compatible to the primitive human geenseed augmentation process and Necron biomechanical fusion.

Data bombarded the Necron Lord from all sides, constant updates from numerous genetic scans and possible candidate viability, preparation for biomechanical augmentation with host genetic structures, and vast streams of command prompts. The information was chaotically vast yet neatly organized through scrolling text prompts which covered every surface of the chamber as turquoise scrolling streams of orderly numerical font. It was oddly beautiful, so she thought, an odd reaction, but understandable for a sentient machine.

"Our current project viability shows seventeen viable genetic samples. Should we begin mass production of the new units?" asked the scout as he forwarded another data packet to his Lord. This time she absorbed the information in .026 seconds, blinking rapidly as the information disseminated into her synced runtime.

"I see, all that is now required is a base sample from my genetic memory components. Very well, we shall proceed." Spoke the Necron Lord as she stepped forward into a data convergence within the chamber. This glowing blue blob of numerical font convergence, for the lack of a better term was like a fountain to which all the scrolling text was flowing and mashing together in order to be streamed and processed by the AI Overwatch for future usage.

Her escorting scout stood to the side as several silver scarabs rolled over the floor and onto her body, ascending her armored physique and coming to rest over her exposed flesh at nineteen separate locations. Here, they inserted long sharp needles deep into her grey biometal flesh in order to extract genetic samples from her installed progenoid glands. For a normal human, all fleshy and weak willed, such a deep incursion into ones physical body would have been immensely painful, but for a machine… she felt nothing.

Once the genetic samples had been acquired the silver scarabs withdrew from their master without leaving a single wound upon her feminine physic, as Yum Cimils biomechanical flesh instantly self repaired leaving neither blood stains nor needle marks. These tiny, lesser machines went back to their repairs and prep work for the Necron manufacturing pods as the Tomb Worlds AI rapidly processed the vast gene data collected from the data convergence.

This process took twenty minutes, as the vast human gene memories were quickly compressed down into a sizeable data file and prepared to be disseminated across numerous next generation Necron soldiers. To lesser fleshy creatures such computational capabilities were impossible, but Necrons were not silly beings limited by neural electrical prompts, they were machines and as machines they were capable of much more rapid thought and data processing.

"Begin producing our new models," Commanded Yum Cimil, "And, in the meantime I shall progress forward with our other plans."

Yum Cimil started to walk away, down the length of the chamber, past the stripped down skeletal frames of Necrons as they were placed inside the suspension chambers with preselected genetic samples from the captured human minds. Almost instantly biomechanical grey flesh started to grow around the Necron frames creating crude, bulky, but most certainly humanisk bodies. Silver scarabs rolled over the numerous pods like ants, occasionally repairing minuet faults in the suspension chambers as they processed the gene data into useable humanoid machines.

In life, Fabius Bile had created a truly perfect being that surpassed both man and machine, and in death his creation had figured out a way to reproduce itself in vast numbers. The first batch of new model Necrons was due to roll off the assembly line in one week, three million undying unbending biomechanical soldiers leading an unstoppable Men of Iron Army. And, speaking of that mechanical army of cruder machines, Yum Cimil had a meeting to attend to.

Green wisps of warp energy erupted into the reproduction chamber of the Tomb World as the Necron Lord stepped forward into a green iris portal that aptly closed behind her. In an instant she was transported into planetary orbit aboard one of the four captured Martian manufacturing vessels.

The first thing that greeted her senses was the vision of blood. The deck plates were caked in large amounts of red vita that aptly covered her boots thus causing several stylish red footprints as she marched forward through the winding crude metal corridors. Dead humans, both servitor drones and normal crewmen littered the ground alongside spent ammunition casings and sizzling hot oil leaking from numerous ancient pipe ducting.

The crews had been slaughtered in mere minutes by the Necron incursion prior to the ships being captured and transported back to Rathmarius for refit. There were no survivors, for her machines were perfect and exceedingly thorough. Everything and everyone had already been accounted for in both the routine internal scans of the ships, and through the usage of facial recognition software which cross referenced the ships crews against existing manifests… one tattered rotting corpse at a time.

Out of the corner of the Necron Lords eye, she saw a silver scarab repairing a hairline structural fault to a rusted pipe. Thus, out of curiosity, Yum Cimil blinked her eyes, using that brief split second to pull up a data display of the human vessel and the three hundred thousand scarabs performing maintenance work upon the decrepit manufacturing ship. Yes, they had made great progress, reported her data prompts, listing all the repairs and structural stability reports.

So, she checked the other ships in orbit to see if their poorly maintained hulls ha d also made such progress towards acceptable space worthy restoration. As expect, their work was satisfactory.

The Necron Lord opened her eyes and continued towards the command deck of the Martian Tech Priest ship. On her way she noticed that several Men of Iron had taken to the task of piling up the human dead and jettisoning them out the nearby airlocks like cluttered debris. She quickly checked their systems, yes; the command prompt had been given by the scout that she had appointed to lead the vessel, but why?

Quickly, Yum Cimil checked the ships logs. Yes, apparently a Man of Iron had slipped on a wet sticky human corpse thus requiring that the poor machine be repaired. Those repairs and loss of productivity had resulted in the need to deal with the human dead. Yes, such ideas were distinctly machine. Productivity suffered because of the problems associated with the decaying human corpses thus now and only now did the dead fleshy things require any direct attention.

There was also an interesting data report showing how the decomposing organic matter from the human corpses could have unnecessary corrosive effects upon the ships interiors, yet another reason to deal with dead humans. Yum Cimil's curiosity had been satisfied… machines had done their duty for logical reasons… as was expected.

It was now that the Necron Lord entered the command deck of the Martian manufacturing vessel to discover her scout standing upon a raised platform in the center of the chamber with his hand linked to a control console. It was clear that his consciousness was desynced to the reality actually surrounding him.

Her eyes in response flashed with ghostly blue energy as she scanned the room with a ripple of blue numerical code. Pysker energy, she smiled, a new talent gained by the Necron people. This scan quickly satiated her suspicions regarding her surroundings. This command deck was not as empty as it appeared.

So, the female Necron found the nearest ships console and hovered her hand over the digital button prompts. Bits of grey skin stretched forward like tendrils from her feminine flesh thus making contact with the display terminal. There was a flash of blue prompt data over her eyes and then the rest of the bridge assembled into clarity through a thin ghostly white mist.

Yum Cimil blinked, and that blink was all that was required to load her surroundings as a construct inhabiting a digital realm. The bridge was shaped the same, but now contained several featureless, humanoid shaped, black shadows moving rapidly as blurs from console to console. The Necron Lord checked her interface, data packet processing at 30 tetra bits per second vs the digital realms 60 tetra bits per second. She quickly adjusted the quantum coding to compensate, thus the black blurs shifted to become steady paced individuals performing mundane system checks.

These were run programs installed by the Necron scout, sound and efficient, better than the crude humans that normally manned the ship. Furthermore, the Scout had noticed her once she synced fully to his runtime, and quickly turned his attention away from the command decks data displays in order to face his Lord and Master.

This entire episode occurred within the ships digital realm, processing at double the normal speed of traditional human interaction time. So it was that the scout and his master conversed within the white fog of the digitally reconstructed bridge. A conversation that would normally take hours reduced down to mere seconds.

"If we are to expand our hold in this galaxy then we will require additional military equipment," stated Yum Cimil, "as well as allies willing and capable to live under our rule. Are there any strategic areas of interests that you have discovered which accommodate this philosophy?"

The scout skimmed through his data archives of the region and came up with an excellent first target, "Yes my Lord. There is an Eldar Craftworld nearby that serves as a major trading hub for this area of space. Acquiring it as an asset would be ideal."

"Tell me of this station…"

"Of course my Lord," replied the scout with a hint of amusement, "The Craftworlds name is Yme Loc…"


End file.
